Anthropocene, a term used to describe the age in which human activity has become the dominant force shaping the earth’s system – climate, atmosphere, oceans, and land. However, this term isn’t just some scientific concept but a drastic shift in how we think about our history and human responsibilities. This epoch isn’t something limited to the present day only. This matter has been embedded into our history for centuries. Industrialization, fossil fuel consumption, and deforestation have steadily altered our planet – embedding the Anthropocene deep into our history. Only in recent decades have scientists and scholars alike finally begun to acknowledge the drastic scale of these changes.

Despite scientific consensus on the dangers of climate change, the broader public has often failed to treat the issue with any type of seriousness or urgency it deserves. However, this disconnect proposes the serious question of how do we, as humans, come to terms with our role in shaping large-scale changes to our planet? Dipesh Chakrabarty offers a vital perspective in order to aid us in answering this question. In his extensive piece of literature “The Climate of History: Four Theses”, Chakrabarty argues that Anthropocene “spells the collapse of the age-old humanist distinction between natural history and human history” (201). Traditionally, historians primarily placed their focus on social, political, and cultural developments while treating climate and natural processes as more of an after thought or more so a backdrop. Anthropocene disrupts this type of framework by showing that human actions now more than ever can greatly alter the very conditions of life on Earth.

This new enlightenment directly challenges the way we understand the modernity and the freedoms we have. For centuries, human development has been tied down to the exploitation of fossil fuels. Critical moments such as the Industrial revolution, technological growth and political freedoms all come at the expense of an abundance of energy sources, primarily non-reusable energy resources. This very energy consumption is the sole catalyst for destabilizing the climate and endangering the very life our planet holds. As Chakrabarty states “There was no point in human history when humans were not biological agents. But we can become geological agents only historically and collectively” (206). Demonstrating the very progress we have made throughout human history have always been intertwined with the environmental destruction of our planet.

Another crucial perspective Chakrabarty gives is that the Anthropocene forces us to think of ourselves not individually or even as a nation but as a species. Climate change is a global scale phenomenon, and its effects cannot be only defined to one specific community. While many historians are used to writing about social groups or political movements, it’s more challenging to write history from the perspective of humanity as a species. Chakrabarty explains, “The history of humans that goes beyond these years of written records constitutes what other students of human pasts—not professional historians— call deep history.” (212). Climate change, then, pushes us to view ourselves in ways that stretch the limits of historical thinking

Given the points we have so far, these insights aid us to show why public indifference to climate change can be detrimental. To treat the Anthropocene with disregard is to ignore the fact that our everyday choices are inseparable from geological and ecological transformations that shape the future of life on Earth. Chakrabarty’s argument reframes the perspective of this matter where climate change is not just an environmental or political problem but a historical turning point that forces us to rethink what it means to be human.

In conclusion, the Anthropocene names the age in which human activity has become a planetary force, blurring the line between natural and human history. Society has often failed to treat the issue with the seriousness it demands. Chakrabarty’s work challenges us to confront this failure, reminding us that our histories of freedom, progress, and modernity are inseparable from the climate crisis we now face. The Anthropocene is not only a scientific term but also a call to reimagine our collective future, one that acknowledges both our species wide responsibility

The Anthropocene is regarded as the period during which humans have had a dominant influence on the climate and the environment. Amitav Ghosh brings attention to the lack of acknowledgement and concern the culture maintains regarding climate change. He argues that the culture is afflicted by “derangement”, as well as its failure to portray climate change in literature. Interpreting the text, I believe Ghosh’s purpose is to influence his readers in accepting climate change for what it actually is and encourage readers to the prospect of change.  

Ghosh argues that the culture suffers from “degrangement.” (10) The Great Derangement is failing to acknowledge and respond properly to the urgent matter, climate change. “And when they fail to find them, … a time when most forms of art and literature were drawn into the modes of concealment that prevented people from recognizing their realities.” (10) I believe Ghosh is saying, to learn or understand the changes that are occurring in the world, people will revert to literature and/or art. Literature serves several purposes, with the primary one being education. If literature and art aren’t appropriately reflecting world changes, people can be misinformed; they can assume this crisis may not be as dire as it seems. According to Ghosh, this era claims to be so “self-aware.” (10) As self-aware people, we should be able to recognize a crisis while also being able to present solutions.

Ghosh shares his experience being in the midst of a tornado in Delhi, India. He further compares his experience with that of today’s weather, explaining that, although it’s “freakish”, it is also improbable. Ghosh uses Hurricane Sandy as an example to show another incident where improbability took place. Hurricane Sandy veered sharply west in the mid-Atlantic and, in doing so, it merged into a winter storm, causing its size and height to increase. (24) This is significant because of the chain reaction. Adam Sobel (a meteorologist who was responsible for tracking Hurricane Sandy) and others like him base their decisions on probability (24). Because of this, the threat was misconstrued, affecting emergency measures. (24) Hurricane Sandy was not unforeseen, but its strength and damage were. Hurricane Catarina struck the coast of Brazil in 2004, leaving destruction behind. (25) Ghosh is showing how these events that were once rare are becoming common. This should, in a way, be seen as a warning to consider climate change and the effect it has on you and the world. As Ghosh said, “But in the era of global warming, nothing is really far away.” (25)

We are currently in a time of anthropocene, a time where humans are the main determinant factor for the changes we see in our environment. This isn’t something that sprung up out of nowhere, scientists have seen the change in our climate for years now yet people didn’t believe the facts or chose to ignore them since it wasn’t affecting them on a great scale. Yet now more than ever everyone can see the effects climate change has on our world, yet some people still choose to be ignorant on the matter. With how important this issue is you’d expect more authors to be writing on the matter in all genres. Yet this isn’t true, and why is that? It’s not a lack of material for in this day and age there is an abundance of papers written on climate change. It is that modern artists and in turn modern fiction, especially realist novels, are unable to fully represent climate change in a way that would be believable to the people. This is covered in Amitav Ghosh’s book, The Great Derangement. As stated by Amitav Ghosh’s “the climate crisis is also a crisis of culture, and thus of the imagination.” (Ghosh 8) In other words, authors believe that the modern form of literature that shapes the very essence of modern story telling is ill-equipped in capturing the unpredictability and monumental scale that is the phenomenon of climate change. 

One of Ghosh’s main points that he discusses is that realist novels have shifted their focus to the mundane everyday that is more probable to the human mind and more on scale with what we can imagine as actually happening to us. The unheard of is moved towards the background while the everyday is moved to the foreground (Ghosh, 17) This form of writing struggles to make space for situations that are unlikely such as mass extinction, tornados and floods. Thus, the writing of the improbable is more often than not used instead in genres such as science fiction or fantasy. In these genres it is not expected for one to believe or relate these events to real life since it is set in a world that is far detached from our world. A fantastical world where anthropomorphic beasts live among humans or where technology is so far advanced we are able to have flying cars. If climate change is integrated into a story with one of these genres it is hard to relate the events occurring to our current times since the world we are reading about is nothing like ours.

A great example Ghosh uses in explaining how hard it is to write the unlikely into realist novels is to that of meeting a long lost childhood friend. In Ghosh’s words, “Within the pages of a novel an event that is only slightly improbable in real life—say, an unexpected encounter with a long-lost childhood friend—may seem wildly unlikely: the writer will have to work hard to make it appear persuasive. If that is true of a small fluke of chance, consider how much harder a writer would have to work to set up a scene that is wildly improbable even in real life.” (Ghosh, 23) To meet an old friend in real life after a great amount of time has passed is a scenario that is unlikely to us as humans, but still if it happened to any one of us it wouldn’t be so shocking. To write something like this in realist novels may be hard, but it would still be possible. On the other hand, something such as climate change which is already a hard to grasp concept by many people would be ten times harder to write into their stories since it is already a very difficult idea to conceptualize. I agree with Ghosh that this is an issue of modern authors. Most attempts at incorporating climate change into their novels will often fall back on genres such as fantasy and scientific fiction where they can build more dystopian worlds to fit their narrative. Never or very rarely will you see authors write about climate change in realist novels since it will not be taken seriously. 

Ultimately, Ghosh’s beginning chapters summarize why climate change is often a topic not covered by literature unless it is in fiction genres where it could easily fit the narrative without seeming unthinkable. We need to expand our narrative forms in a way that allows our imagination to comprehend the improbable in genres like realistic fiction.

Amitav Ghosh shows a powerful way of how climate change is misrepresented through contemporary literature. His main concern is that the novel, especially in its modern realist form, has failed tremendously to address the climate crisis in a meaningful way. This failure, according to Ghosh, isn’t just a literary oversight, rather its a relfection of cultural inability to imagine and recognize climate change as part of our shared reality. Even then, it is precisely the novel that holds the potential to help us think more clearly and deeply about the climate crisis. It really changed my perspective as a reader.

Ghosh’s concept of “recognition” is the main focus point. He unpacks the roots of the word to get readers to see that recognition involves a shift from ignorance to awareness. He argues that many people have already witnessed the effects of climate change—floods, wildfires, droughts but still fail to connect them to more simpler environmental patterns. The problem, Ghosh suggests, is not a lack of experience but a lack to illustrate those experiences in ways that promote understanding. Novels can play a big role by creating narratives that allow readers to recognize climate change as something rooted in lived human experience.

One of Ghosh’s noted points is his critique of how climate related events are pushed to the sides of fiction. When they do appear, they’re often framed as speculative, fantastical, or apocalyptic like in relation to typical, broad idea genres like science fiction. He argues that this creates distance with readers from the reality of climate change, making it feel too much rather than immediate. The novel’s commitment to realism, developed during a period of environmental stability, but now struggles to accommodate the “other” events that characterize our current ecological moment. This falls under things such a natural disaters. Yet these are precisely the stories that need to be told. Its tended to be overlooked and not learnt to its fullest potential.

Ghosh views this as both a limitation and an opportunity. He WANTS us viewers to reimagine the scope of the novel and to embrace narrative forms that can hold the complexity, unpredictability, and scale of climate change. Rather than avoid the improbable, novelists must face it head-on, creating stories that reflect the present and the uncertainties of the future. In doing so, fiction can help reshape cultural perception, allowing climate change to be seen not just as a scientific issue, but rather as a human and one with lesson.

In conclusion, while Ghosh is critical of the novel’s current failure to represent climate change, he also points to its potential side. Novels can serve as tools of recognition. If writers rise to the challenge he begins to say, the novel can become one of the most powerful mediums we have for imagining the environmental crises of our time. What is the past that the future holds?

     With the genre Anthropocene often being told through fictional stories, Bracke and the examples she uses argues whether or not said genre would bring back novels. Bracke says, “The tension between the vastness … does not lead these scholars to dismiss the novel but rather has them focus on the Anthropocene as ‘an opportunity for the novel to do what it has always done—innovate,’” after she stated previously that “…the novel may no longer be able to adequately capture human experience” (89/88). With the Anthropocene being a serious topic, it leaves one wondering why this topic should be told through fictional stories. Maybe it’s due to the fact that a novel is told through connected events, which no doubt would fit the events of what leads up to a climate crisis. On the other hand, it could be that recent studies have found that fiction books are read more compared to nonfiction books. In fact, the article “More American readers are choosing fiction over fact” by Daniel de Visé states, “Fiction book sales have risen by 45 percent since pre-pandemic 2019, while nonfiction sales have slipped by 2 percent, according to data from NPD BookScan for the adult publishing market.” But this is just America alone. Does this apply to other countries as well? If the Anthropocene were to be told through novels, how many people would find interest in these books, and what countries would it be the most popular in? 

     Bracke says that “some scholars argue that the conventional, realist novel has run its course and is unable to imagine the new circumstances that humanity faces in the twenty-first century” (88). Realist novels tend to focus on the representation of everyday life, paying close attention to the different circumstances and conditions of life. With the changes that we have faced in the past years from the digital aspect of the world, the mix of cultures, political challenges, recent concerns of climate change, etc., how would a novel capture all of this if it is not up to date with these circumstances? This kind of relates to Ghosh’s​​ The Great Derangement and the story of their ancestors having to relocate/escape to higher ground after “the great river suddenly changed course, drowning the village,” where only a certain amount of the life in that village was able to escape (2). My question to this would be, how would an event like the great flood in Ghosh’s story affect a country like America, where there are multiple cultures living together? With the way certain states and cities are set up, are there even possibilities that people could escape from a flood?

1. Visé, Daniel de. “More American Readers Are Choosing Fiction over Fact.” The Hill, 30 Nov. 2022, thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/arts-culture/3755188-more-american-readers-are-choosing-fiction-over-fact/.